


Hot Rocks

by ljs



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: AU, Established Relationship, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-21
Updated: 2010-09-21
Packaged: 2017-10-12 02:06:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/119596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ljs/pseuds/ljs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU Season Seven (with established Giles/Anya in the background)</p><p>Giles. Spike. A quest. A cave.<br/>Should end well.</p><p>Written for the 2010 Summer of Giles community; acknowledgment goes to the Rolling Stones.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hot Rocks

"--backpack."

Giles, lost in his own thoughts about the night ahead, catches Anya's last word. “Er, yes, darling?”

When he looks over at the driver's side, she's pressed her lips together. He controls his habitual desire – not the time, really – and says, “I'm sorry, Anya. What?”

“I was just listing the items I've placed in your backpack. Flashlights, which yes, I know you people call 'torches,' whatever. Emergency food and water, thermos of tea, thermos of blood, the spell ingredients you requested, rope, and your second-favourite dagger.” The dagger in question isn't as sharp as her tone or her flicking on the turn signal. “If you're going to do this stupid thing, I want you to be prepared as possible.”

He adjusts his glasses against the last shaft of sun; sunset comes early in February, even in Sunnydale. “It's not stupid, as I've explained several times, and I'll only be gone a few hours... Right, never mind. Thank you.”

“Sure.” She spins the steering wheel in her usual emphatic way, and they speed around a corner. “Love you, need you to live.”

“I love you too,” he says, smiling. After eight months together, he might have expected to lose that utter delight in her – but he now thinks it likely will last forever.

Assuming he makes it through tonight, that is.

She slams the car to a halt in front of 1630 Revello Drive, then throws the handbrake into place and leaps over the centre of the car to kiss him. He's ready for her – hands to her waist, one hand slipping higher to the undercurve of her breast; mouth seeking hers, trying to convey more than he can say.

Before he's done, however, she pulls back to her seat and with those deliciously reddened lips blows out a breath. “Okay, Rupert, scoot. I've got to get down to Ventura and collect those flame-throwers from Hans the Fire Guy, and then be back here to collect _you_ when you're done.”

“Yes, darling. And do be careful with Hans--”

“I can take care of myself, and Dawn as my assistant. He's not going to cheat us.”

“I was more worried about his crush on you, to be honest. But I trust you.”

Her smile in reply is bright enough to light a dozen bloody caves, he thinks. He caresses her cheek, and then collects his pack and gets out of the car.

Dawn is practically flying down the front steps as he approaches. “We'll get those weapons, Giles! And I know you and Spike'll get what you need, too!” she says, spinning around him and then bolting to the waiting car without worrying about a reply.

He sighs – ah, youthful energy, how irritating -- and then starts up the steps himself. Before he reaches the second one, however, the door opens again, and his Slayer, crossed arms and furrowed brow, stares at him. “Any second thoughts?” she says. “Third? Fourth? 'Cause I'm about to my tenth.”

“No, Buffy.” He reaches the top. “You know that this is the only way--”

“--to get the Cura Crystal,” Willow finishes as she appears beside Buffy. With a finger to hold her place, she closes the text that she and Dawn plucked from a hitherto forgotten room in the UC Sunnydale library. The book, written by a Spanish priest during the eighteenth century, mentions a truth-telling crystal carried by an Andalusian mage and then taken by several Chumash men to be hidden in a cave in the mountains; Giles has found corroborating evidence that this crystal was known to exist, and that it's a powerful tool indeed.

He has several reasons for wanting this stone, in fact; among them is the publicly discussed one. “And you'll be trying to capture a Bringer tonight, yes, Buffy?”

“So once you guys bring back the stone, magical interrogation can occur, yeah, yeah.” She has clearly reached her twelfth thought by now. “But I'm just not sure...”

“We'll be fine, Buffy.” Spike emerges from the darkness of the house. “The old man and I will be just fine on our pleasure-jaunt to La Cueva de Muerto. Could have been named for me, yeah?”

Giles bites back his snarl, and smiles instead. Willow, no doubt seeing the edge he hasn't managed to hide, turns pale, and then tiptoes back and almost into Xander, limping out behind Spike.

“Hang on, Willow,” Xander says. With a nervous motion he throws his car keys in the air – but with the patch over his eye, his depth perception's off. The keys clatter to the floor. “Curses. There goes my future career in major-league baseball.”

Spike scoops up the keys. “A crying shame, Harris.” There's that new, fleeting kindness in his voice – strengthened now, since he'd been the one last Friday to pull Xander away before the Bringer could do much damage with that flaming knife. “But once the eye heals, you'll be Dork-King of the Diamond again.”

“Again? Never was, o Bleached-and-Souled Wonder.” Xander grins at Spike, then slants a look at Giles. “Do you guys promise not to screw up my truck?”

“Of course,” Giles says, before smoothly stealing the keys from Spike's hold. “So long as I'm driving. The last time Spike drove my car, as I recall, he crashed it.”

“'Course, old man, last time you drove _me,_ you plowed a bloody Winnebago into a whole backlot's worth of Knights Who Said 'Key,'” Spike says.

Giles angles his shoulder to elude Spike's grab. “And now we're leaving. Back by midnight, Buffy, that's the plan.”

A flash from the interior of the Summers house almost blinds him. When he blinks, he sees that sodding Andrew smiling from behind a camera. “Just documenting the quest's beginning,” the idiot says.

Oh for fuck's sake, Giles thinks, and all but runs down the steps to get away.

“You're both expected to get back in one piece!” is Buffy's parting shot. “Don't make me come up there and save you.”

Giles doesn't dignify that with an answer.

Xander's pickup sits bathed in fading light, waiting for them. Giles climbs in the driver's seat (American side, wrong side) and heaves his backpack over the seat – in the process narrowly missing Spike, who's getting in on the other side. It's a mark of the new Spike that he merely says “Oi, watch the over-packed gear,” and then settles in.

Giles distrusts the mildness. Distrusts the new Spike, for various good reasons. But he murmurs “Sorry” and then starts the truck.

When some yowling country song blasts from the speakers, Giles collides with Spike in their rush for the tuner. A leather-clad elbow in the ribs is enough to send Giles reeling – and then Spike produces (with his trademark flourish, utterly annoying) a CD of his own and slides it into the requisite slot.

Now it's “Jumping Jack Flash” blasting from the speakers. Beginning of _Hot Rocks_ , Disc 2,Giles reckons.

Spike's looking out at the window when Giles glances over. “Right,” Spike says to the question Giles hasn't asked. “Well, I've had a shufti or two at your record collection, old man.”

“Indeed. Still owe me a replacement copy of _Sandinista!_ , as I recall.” Blood and fragments, all that had been left of the last album he'd got from an old girlfriend...

Spike doesn't quite smile. “Yeah. I'll get right on that.”

Giles snorts, and punches the gas.

Mick and Keith and the boys accompany them on the drive into the mountains outside Sunnydale. Giles knows the way, mostly, although Spike twice unfolds a county map to confirm the correct road. The first time he does, he somewhat embarrassedly pulls a pair of glasses from the depths of the duster and mutters something about fruit-fly print.

Giles feels an odd pang – familiarity? -- at the sight. Then he turns his attention to the road and the task ahead.

The Cueva de Muerto – the Spanish name for it; the books hadn't recorded the Chumash one – is reported to be a series of three smallish (as caves go) rooms, once one passed through wards left by God knew who. Not a living cave, even centuries ago; any speleothems would have been fully formed when the book had been written. The crystal would be in the third room, in what the book simply described as a natural opening.

Well, Giles has enough magic for wards and discovery. (He bloody well hopes.) Has enough for what needs to be done.

On that thought, he sees the last sign, and makes the last turn before Spike says anything.

It's more of a rutted track than a road – hence the need for Xander's vehicle – but it'll serve. The cavern isn't all that far from the actual road, according to the information they've gleaned. Yes, there, dark on dark, rises the cliff.

Giles wrestles the truck over one last rut, and then --

Wards, thick and old-black and likely to crush them.

He slams on the brakes just in time. The truck's back wheels spin on a patch of fallen pine needles, the back end of the truck slides north nearer the wards, but they stop without hitting anything.

Spike's mouth twists in his trademark smirk. “And you complain about _my_ driving, old man.”

Giles sends him a narrow-eyed glare, then lifts his gear out of the back without much care for Spike's whereabouts. When the backpack hits the git in the shoulder rather hard, Giles smiles. “Right, then. Let's go.”

The California night is chilly, fragrant, and deep, deep dark without the headlamps of the truck. Giles takes a torch out of the pack and hands it to Spike, then gets his own. With that done, he can shine the light into the depths of his pack and find the first of the spell ingredients he needs.

“Is it stink-beetle time, Rupes?” Spike says sarkily. Sounds little different from the chained vampire who broke free when Giles was fumbling through a truth spell not so long ago.

With the fury of memory, and with the knowledge he's regained some of that skill in magic he'd used to repress, Giles sends a grim smile up at the hovering pillock. “That can be arranged.” When Spike laughs – less sarkily, in fact – Giles adds, “Please stand back.”

The ward-breaking compound he, Willow, and Anya put together this afternoon is silky-smooth in his hands. He thinks of old times -- casting a spell in that squat in North London, drunk and stupid, the casting-circle eating through old oak boards, and Randall's laugh at the sight. Laugh of a dead man, God... Then he thinks of better times – casting with newly human Anya last summer in Devon, both of them fragile, both of them stronger than they'd have imagined. That strength has grown in the past eight months as they've battled the First Evil.

Just out of the corner of his eye, he sees the torch-beam playing over the seemingly smooth cliff-face. “No caves here, old man,” Spike says. “You sure this is the place?”

“Yes.” He uses his right hand to test the invisible wall. It's oddly warm, and rough as the stone it hides. At the hottest spot, he makes a circle with his left hand. The ward-breaking compound hisses as it falls, sparks in darkness.

Above it, a door forms in nothingness. Behind it yawns the mouth of La Cueva de Muerto.

“Right,” Spike says, a little shakily. “Once more unto the breach, then.”

“Right,” Giles echoes. “Once more unto the breach.” He picks up his backpack and goes through the door, then into the cavern.

The first space isn't much – several feet higher than Giles' head; unusually for this area, a limestone formation; dry walls, so no proper speleothems here but a few great boulders; only an ancient painting of a dead man to mark the right spot.

“Lovely. All mod cons,” Spike says from behind Giles, “let's see what else the place has got,” and then pushes past him toward the gate formed by two of those boulders.

“I'll lead,” Giles says sharply.

Spike turns, his smile caught in the torchlight. Maybe it's a trick of the light that the expression looks sad, but his voice is a match. “Spent over a hundred and twenty years in the dark and the tunnels, old man. Think you should let the more qualified one forge ahead.”

Giles has spent two decades' worth of summers cave-diving in the West Country; he's never been one to stay in the show-caves, choosing instead to climb down into the dark. But he shrugs, and gestures for Spike to go first through the opening.

The second cave-room is a bit larger. Warmer here, with strange air. Stalagmites have grown in odd patterns over the floor; they form a circle, then a bigger circle, then bigger still.

Spike steps into the first circle and looks around. He seems taller centred there, despite his short stature. Always has seemed bigger than he is, Giles thinks.

Spike passes his torchlight over the ceiling. From the upper crevices come the sound of wings, awake and then swiftly stilled. He laughs. “Right. I could fancy myself as Batman. Do a better job of it than Angel, yeah.” His duster ripples with a twitch of his hand. Then, amused: “You can be Alfred.”

“And you can sod off,” Giles says. Unamused.

Spike laughs again. “A year back in Blighty and regular shagging, Rupert, and you've gone all butch. Changed, yeah.”

Anger rises – familiar, if not well-timed. “No. This is always who I was, even if it didn't seem so.” Giles steps forward, pushes Spike out of the circle. “And keep a civil tongue in your head when you refer to Anya.”

“Demon-girl's got you whipped,” Spike says, chuckling.

The chuckle stops when Giles shoves him again. Above them, another flutter of wings; below, the scatter of stones underfoot. “She's human now. And regardless, human or demon, you'll show her some bloody respect, William.”

Spike steadies himself on an outcropping, and then stands. He looks wary in the torchlight.

It doesn't make Giles any less angry. “Half a year after your trip to Africa, but you sound the same.” A hard exhalation, a breath he's been holding since he came back to the news of Spike's soul. It doesn't help. “The fucking same as you did when you were working with Adam against us all.”

Spike nods slowly. “Yeah. There we go, old man. I've been waiting for this.” He aims the torch at Giles, who aims back. The beams of light cross, illuminating them both. “You don't trust the soul. Soul I bled for... So, what? Is this the other reason you're going for this bloody Cura Crystal? Work some mojo, see if I've lied?”

The pillock always had a knack for digging into painful truth, Giles thinks. And this is all bound up in pain: opera and a rose and a dead girlfriend at the hand of a once-souled vampire, and the breaking of Giles' heart; Buffy's broken heart after she had to deal with Angelus, her flight, her lingering pain. Buffy can't afford another such turn, he thinks as both Watcher and man.

And he, his once more healed heart given to Anya, can't afford another loss. Blood and fragments would be all that was left of him.

Besides, Spike is leaving out a rather important element here. “Not just to test your soul,” Giles says brusquely. “To find whatever trigger the First has left in you.”

Spike moves now, leaps over the circle to stand far too close to Giles. The hidden spectators flutter their wings once more. “I've beaten the First, you git. I can beat it a-fucking-gain if there's anything left, which there bloody isn't.”

“Eleven people dead. Eleven people we know about, that is. And now Buffy trusts you.”

“She can.”

“Yet you're perfectly placed to tear through her ranks before anyone can stop you, should the First employ you again. She'd have to deal with the carnage. _And_ she would grieve for you, just as she grieved for that pillock Angel five years ago.”

It's the last point that makes Spike hesitate, Giles knows – half-step back, shoulders down, aggression dissolved. Spike's voice sounds different, too, smoother, _younger_ : “Don't think she would.”

Giles pushes his own anger down, even as he aims the torch up at Spike's face. “I don't care to debate her feelings. I'm only concerned with the possibilities for disaster. Why are you so resolved against our using the crystal to find out?”

When Spike's shoulders twitch this time, the duster ripples again. Bloody Batman, Giles thinks: his own smile goes crooked. Spike says in that young-sounding voice, “Right, I'll think about it. But we'll need to find the shiny rock first.”

"Fair enough,” Giles says. Foundation's been properly laid. “I'll take point, then.”

Giles does lead now – a mark of Spike's disquiet, perhaps. The opening to the third room is smaller than the other two, jagged-edged. The backpack almost catches on one of the outcroppings, but Giles pushes free with a hand on the rock.

The limestone is strangely hot to the touch. The air coming from the third cave-room is warm, too, far warmer than it should be underground.

Frowning, Giles takes two steps in--

And then leaps back, grabbing for the stone wall with one hand, blocking Spike's progress with the other.

Six or so steps in, the sloping floor disappears into a chasm.

“Bloody hell,” he and Spike say in unison.

As Giles tries to steady his breathing, Spike takes one step forward and flashes his torch around. The cave-room _is_ rather small – the back wall is visible through a thicket of stalactites on the other side, and the sides are only twenty feet or so away. But the chasm goes down, and down, and down.

“Don't remember this from the literature,” Spike says.

“Because it was described as a sodding 'natural opening.'” Easier now, Giles sighs. “La Cueva de Muerto, ha fucking ha.”

“You've a way with words, Rupert.” The torchlight catches a remarkably sweet grin from Spike. “So, what's next? A spot of location-work? Or did your bird pack you some rope?”

“Of course she did. Anya is remarkably thorough.”

“Yeah.” Spike's grin fades. “Right, um, about the other thing I said, back there...sorry. Uncalled-for.”

Giles looks at him for a long moment, enough to make Spike shift uncomfortably. “Right, then.” He shrugs off his backpack. “Whilst I consider our options, we can have our tea break.”

“Your thorough girl packed you tea.” There's a laugh underneath Spike's words.

“And packed you blood, so you'd best be properly appreciative.”

“Really?” When Giles hands over the thermos neatly labelled _Blood for Spike_ – his darling is profoundly attached to her label-maker, the one she'd saved from the Magic Box wreckage – Spike's laugh fades away into sincerity. “Do thank her for me.”

“Do it yourself, you berk.” The insult is reflexive, but Giles means it less... pointedly than he ordinarily would. Maybe it's the lovely aroma of Assam wafting from his own thermos. Maybe it's that moment in the second cave where he managed to articulate at least some of his fear. He's getting better at that, he thinks.

They lean back against the wall –yes, it's oddly warm-- and sip at their drinks. The torchlights are aimed at the back wall, which perhaps is why it takes Giles a moment or two to realise that there's a glimmer, down there in the chasm. Perhaps not that far down.

“Won't need a location spell for the crystal, I reckon,” Spike says before Giles can speak.

“Yes. I _am_ glad for that rope--”

But before Giles can finish his thought, there comes a panicked rush of wings from the second cave-room, there come footsteps.

There come two Bringers, knives silver-clear even in the darkness.

Spike's thermos goes flying, rolling, plummeting down, when he leaps to his feet. His grin looks demonic in truth as he shifts into gameface. “Look who's here,” he says. “Some boys who want to be _muerto_.”

Giles would roll his eyes at that, but he's too busy scrabbling for his second-best dagger. Bless his love and her forethought.

One of the Bringers pitches into the chasm, assisted by Spike's good arm. But Spike's Docs slip a bit on the slope, too near the edge.

Then the second Bringer leaps onto Giles, and he has no time to consider his colleague's danger.

The Bringer's robe smells of blood and fire, Giles notes dizzily as they wrestle – up, down, over. The Bringer's knife slices into his right arm on another turn. Blood now, blood indeed.

Giles angles his own blade on the next turn and drives it into the Bringer's heart. The creature's blood is acid on his hands.

Then he's rolling, falling, plummeting just like --

“No, you don't!” Spike says, and his strong white hand catches Giles's wrist. Hurt arm. Fuck. “If I let you die, my unlife wouldn't be worth livin'. First Buffy, then Anya, then Buffy again -- Christ, I'd dust myself first.”

“Right. Hang on.” Sick, aching, Giles finds a little purchase with his toes – there's enough of a ledge to serve – and then grabs onto the stone with his left hand.

Or rather, he plans to do so, but there's an opening in the rock just there. Glimmering. “Seriously, hang on,” he repeats, and then makes himself lean down to see. “Ah, of course.”

“Of course what?” Spike says irritably. “'Cause I might be incredibly strong, but the gods know that you're quite a heavyweight.”

“The Cura Crystal.” Giles takes a breath. “Nicely placed in a dead man's skull.”

Spike starts laughing helplessly –his grip secure, though. “Right. Of course. Well, get it and we'll be away before more robed idiots show up.”

Giles collects the crystal from its place, fixed in the skull's forehead, then curses under his breath at the heat of it. But it fits his palm as if it were made for it. “Ready now.”

Slowly and painfully – and with Spike's hold to anchor him -- he crawls out of the chasm. “Christ Jesus,” he gasps, and lies prone on the floor. “Just a second to rest.”

“You're bleeding, old man,” Spike says. “Did you not hear the part where I'm terrified of Buffy and your Anya? Move your fat arse, we need to get you back—”

The rest of his words are lost in the flutter of wings, a thousand thousand, like the earth itself is hissing, and then from the second cave-room comes a feminine hum, light and airy and mad.

“Oh God, no,” Spike whispers, and lets go of Giles's arm.

“Spike, my Spike,” Drusilla says as she fills the door between rooms. Or at least Giles thinks it's Drusilla, although--

“You're the First.” Spike's words fall like stones into the chasm, down and down.

The First smiles.

“Am I, precious boy? My boy filled with hideous, hideous light?” She – it -- laughs. “I followed you and the old man, yes. The old man knew the magic words to let me in. I've wanted the sparkles you found. You always find the _best_ sparkles.” The Drusilla-smile is horrifyingly loving. “Shall I sing you your magic words, my boy?”

Spike's up against the wall, trying to press himself flat. Giles can't figure out why the git doesn't run through the illusion, just fucking _run_. But then he remembers a midnight visitation of his own, the First as Jenny, and he understands the frozen fear, the feeling cut in half. Doesn't help his own sudden terror, of course.

He folds the crystal safe in his good hand and thinks fast.

“No,” Spike says, and it's a brave yet utterly failed attempt at defiance. “No magic words.”

“Magic song, then. The birdies taught it to me,” the First says. Then it lifts the Drusilla-arms and spins in a mad, tight dance, singing, “'Early one morning, just as the sun was rising, I heard a maid sing In the valley below--'”

“No!” Spike howls. But his face is already changing, human to demon. He's already jumping toward Giles.

And Giles meets Spike in the middle. As he presses the Cura Crystal – hot now, so fearfully magic-hot – to Spike's forehead, he incants louder than Evil the first thing that occurs to him: “'But it's all right now, In fact it's a gas, But it's all right--'”

Magic sparks in the crystal, then burns below.

Yellow eyes go blue, then yellow, then blue. Spike's forehead smooths itself into human again. Yet Giles keeps chanting, louder than Evil.

It's the First's turn to scream, “No!”

The Cura Crystal cuts Spike's forehead. A glimmering line of blood forms, line like a chasm. Spike wipes it away with the heel of one hand and then says, “You can stop now, Rupes. I'm fine.”

Giles lets his hand fall. He and Spike turn as one toward the opening, but the First's gone.

Typical.

“So it seems,” Giles says, tired and sick and increasingly dizzy, “the 'treatment' or 'cure' of the Cura Crystal is deadly--”

“Unless you're already dead,” Spike finishes. “Handy.”

“You might say that.” Giles can't seem to stand up any more. The walls of the cavern shimmer, even though there's no light other than the fallen torches. “Sorry, Spike. Let me just kip here for half a...”

Sweet darkness descends, but he still bloody hurts.

The next hour passes in flashes and fleeting sounds. Boots dragged on stone. Empty, crystal-burnt hand clenching into a fist against the pain, making it so much worse. Spike's white face and fervent curses as he binds Giles's arm. Jolts over a rutted track. Sound of the Stones. _Hot Rocks_ , Disc 2, Giles reckons hazily. The shoulder-harness of the seat belt holding him still. Empty, crystal-burnt hand relaxing on a dusty thigh.

He doesn't fully come back until Spike slams on the brakes in front of the Summers house and honks the horn. “Anya! Buffy!” the pillock bellows.

Giles tries to push himself upright, but it's too much. Groaning, he lies back. “Leave me. Save yourself.”

“Don't think I won't,” Spike snaps, then, as Giles's door swings open, “I swear on everything you two deem holy that I didn't do anything to him! Except, well, for a little-problem-with-the-First's-trigger, but that's all done and I don't want the sodding responsibility of the old man any more.”

Anya's there first, her arms around him. “Oh, _honey_.” Giles murmurs something and sinks onto her breasts. God he loves it here.

He dimly registers Buffy hovering over Anya's shoulder. “What happened?” she says in her generalissimo voice.

Struggling for his Watcher-trained clarity, he says, “Got the crystal. Attacked by Bringers. We killed them. The First arrived. I broke Spike's trigger. Passed out.”

“Oh, _Giles_ ,” Buffy says, with Willow and Dawn and Xander harmonising behind her.

“I tried not to bleed on Xander's truck,” Giles manages to say. “Might not have succeeded.”

Anya's lips touch his temple sweetly, so sweetly. “I have a coupon for cleaning if you did. Now come on, honey, let me take you home.”

“Yes, please,” he says from the depths of his heart.

Somehow he does find himself on his feet, carried by his love and his Slayer and various others to his and Anya's car, placed almost gently in the passenger seat. There's some talk in the background about debriefing tomorrow, but he doesn't actually care right now. It's enough to be on his way home.

As Anya slides into the driver's seat, however, the door behind Giles opens. “Backpack,” Spike says, and there's a thunk on the backseat. “The old man and I found the contents very helpful, Anya, thank you.” Then blue eyes – no yellow – smile at Giles from far too near. “Good night, Alfred.”

Giles smiles, just a little. “Sod off, you berk.”

The car door shuts on Spike's laughter.

Then Giles looks over at his darling, who's jabbing the car key into the requisite slot. Lazily he says, “Give us a kiss, love.”

“When you're not bleeding to death, Rupert, absolutely.” She starts the car and then slams down the handbrake.

Perfect, he thinks, and lets himself fall sideways so that his head is on her lap. She jolts underneath him, then, sighing, settles him in.

“Drive fast, darling,” he says, after a kiss to her thigh. “This isn't all that comfortable.”

“Great great great. Let him go on an adventure with Spike, he comes home wounded and without his damn mind,” she mutters, but she smooths his hair gently and then hits the gas.

He looks up at the dashboard. The lights there glimmer like magic, he thinks. They need the proper incantation.

“'Love, sister, It's just a kiss away,'” he murmurs, and closes his eyes.  
  



End file.
